Ep 69 with Arielle Estoria

Ailey Jolie: 00:06

Welcome to In This Body, a podcast where we dive deep into the pop power of embodiment. I'm your host, Aile Jolie, a psychotherapist deeply passionate about living life free from the wisdom within your very own body. The podcast In This Body is a love letter to embodiment, a podcast dedicated to asking important questions like: how does connecting to your body change your life? How does connecting to your body enhance your capacity to love more deeply and live more authentically? And how can collective embodiment alter the course of our share role? Join me for more consciously curated conversations with leading experts. Each episode is intended to support you in reconnecting to your very own body. This podcast will be available for free wherever you get your podcast, making it easy for you to stay connected to In This Body, the podcast with me, Ailey Jolie. Welcome back to How to Be in This Body. I'm your host, Ailey Jolie, and today I'm in conversation with Arielle Estoria, poet, spoken word artist, author of The Unfolding. Her motto is Words not for the ears, but for the soul, and you'll understand why by the end of this hour. We move through the Baptist upbringing, Arielle's still unwinding, the difference between a hesitation and a true no, and the permission slip she wishes she had given herself sooner. This is a conversation about what happens to a body that's been taught to be small. Welcome to this episode of How to Be in This Body with me, Ailey Sholy. My first question for you is one that I always start the podcast with. And I would love to hear from you what does being in your body mean?

Arielle Estoria: 01:50

This has been probably the epitome of the last few years for me and really understanding, first not even understanding it, but first acknowledging it. Means embracing my natural hair. It means um really just tuning into my winter skin. It means finding movement that feels restorative versus trying to meet a certain benchmarker. It means just kind of embracing the summer as it comes and getting ready to show a little bit more skin. And so it's a beautiful and constant journey. And so these days I think it means I feel like I'm sitting in a really beautiful, confident, and aware of myself kind of space.

Ailey Jolie: 02:32

For the listener who maybe hasn't encountered you or your work yet, or doesn't know the journey that led you to that beautiful description of being in the body that you just gave, I would love to hear from you kind of where you came from and what you're offering today.

Arielle Estoria: 02:49

I am a poet and an author and a creator and a drop-down of a lot of multi-passionate. Lately, I've been saying I'm a multi-passionate, multi-talented, multi-faceted human being. And so I am all of that and more. I I grew up in the Bay Area in love with arts and the word form and language ever since I can remember, you know. I was never much of a doodler in college. I was very much so like scribbling poems and things like that. So I've always been in love with the the love of language, and that really shaped into more writing creatively in high school. I went to arts high school, I studied theater there, but I also wrote a lot. So they kept putting me in a lot of the writing department exercises, different workshops and stuff like that. I did my first spoken word workshop, and that really opened up the world of poetry for me. I had written a lot in a more theatrical sense, so a lot of like monologues and um, you know, woman acts and things like that. And then that turned into a spoken word. I went to a writing workshop and they were like, write something that, you know, has recently happened to you that that you feel affected by. And uh I wrote that and then they were like, Great, now get up and perform it. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is a lot more vulnerable than I was used to, but I kept up that tandem of being someone else and also being myself. And I did that up until college. I double majored in psychology and theater. Like I said, I'm the oldest kid, so I couldn't go to school just for theater, right? Definitely not to a private Christian university. Um double-majored in psychology and theater. And I was like, I can do the practical thing and I can do the fun thing. And the more I did college, the more I found out myself on stage performing and doing things like that. And then I graduated. And I think after that started what I call my unfolding journey, um, which is the title of my book. And it was a lot of this language of growing up in this pretty traditional conservative home, having a lot of ideas about what my body could and could not look like, how I could and could not operate in my body. And here I was, this poet, this free-formed kind of being that just really ebbed and flowed. And I, and I thought a lot of that aspect of myself. And it wasn't until these last, I would say, um, 10 years or so, where I was really starting to feel like I feel like I am this in this confined space. I feel like the the bud of who I am wants to expand and be more. And that's really scary. And I wonder what that looks like. And I just constantly try to pursue what that unfolding could look like, you know. What does it feel like to be in my body in a hot yoga class, even though I've been told to demonize this practice? You know, what would it feel like to be with a partner who loves and sees all of me? Um, and it has nothing to do with my religious identity. And so, really undoing and unfolding, no fun intended, all of that work. And so I call it, you know, the journey of coming home. Learning every day what it means to not just be in my body, but to embrace her, to love her, um, have this affirmation that is like I love and accept my body for where she is, where she will be, and where she is going. And that has been something that has tethered me um for many, many years now.

Ailey Jolie: 06:15

I want to bring us back to a word that you used to describe your own lived experience, was a which was a conservative background. Feel willing to share some of your lived experience with the listener of maybe what it felt like and how you reinhabited yourself after maybe some of those ideologies really seeped in.

Arielle Estoria: 06:32

In the tradition that I grew up with, which is predominantly Baptist, um, there was a huge distinction on what women could and could not do. You know, I watched my mom be a very equipped speaker, be a woman of God, if you will. And she was told that she couldn't teach or preach from the pulpit. She had to preach from the floor so that she was on the same level as everyone else. And I remember experiencing that and being like, Yep, this is probably not the full route I'm gonna go. Because at that point, I already very much so knew I was meant to be on stage, you know, I was meant to be a performer. Even as a kid, I all my videos of myself are me with a feather boa and a microphone and a clicky heel, and I found a stage and I made up a song. I called myself Erica Wallace. I don't know who I thought that was, but in my head, I think that was Arielle Estoria. And I think me as a kid always knew I was going to get there eventually. So being in this tradition where it was like, you know, women can't speak unless it's only to women. You don't really have a space in the household or in a partnership unless it's being, you know, accommodating to the head of the house or the male, all of that felt so small for me. And it was really confusing because it was all I knew. So how would I know that it felt limiting or that it felt small? I just knew I kept being more, I kept finding myself in more expansive, louder, brighter spaces than those. And so over the years, you know, it wasn't until I graduated from college where I was like, what if I just do this artist thing? And I think that is what helped me find my wings. I think that is what helped me find my voice, realizing, like, oh, I I'm not made for the black and white. That doesn't actually work for the work that I'm meant to do, for the purpose I feel like I'm being put here to put, you know, into this world. The magic I feel like I'm meant to contribute kind of goes outside of that. And so my parents are just like, oh, well, that's our that's our hippie child, you know, like that's our woo child over there, and very much so, you know, and I think that was like always a part of me that I think was meant to exist. I I mention in my book the unfolding, that first phase of that is the eclipsing or the awakening. It's very disorienting. It's like waking up from a nap and you're like, who am I? Where am I? What year is it? You know, like you have all this, these questions of like, I feel like I've always been this person, but it kind of contradicts where I've come from. And even to this day, it's still something I have to navigate. I have to ask myself, are these my fears? Um, I have to ask myself, is this my conditioning or is it my own thinking? Um, is this my voice or someone else's that I've adapted so much so that I've associated it with being mine? And luckily and thankfully, therapists, I have a therapist who I love and who's amazing, who's really walked me through. Like, is that you or is that somewhere else? You know? And it felt very like suffocating, you know, like physically. I think I had a lot of panic attacks. You just feel it in your body where you're like, I'm not living and operating to my fullest extent. And I don't know why that is or what that means, but how can I continue to undo things and just try it on for size? And I had to undo a lot. Like, what would it look like to maybe not go to church all the time? You know, like what would it look like to practice other embodiment things like yoga, like communing with nature and that being my sense of spirituality or that being my sense of church, if you will, and really just what trying out what feels like me. I didn't own a bikini until I was like 28 or 29. I wish I had a bikini as a teenager. Like I wish I had space to just be in my outwardly be in my body because of the more conservative, you know, it was like I didn't own a two-piece. If I did have a swimsuit, it was a one-piece and a t-shirt was over it. You know, like I just I little things like that. I write in my book about going to a nude beach for the first time. I wish I would have had that experience of just watching people be in their body, just being in their body. There wasn't a thing to it. There wasn't uh a science or a thought process. It was just people just being in their bodies, you know? I wish I would have um, you know, had that experience. And so do and go to the places um that remind you of freedom, whatever that looks like for you. I was able to attend a retreat. Um, and all the other women got naked. I did it. I stayed in the cabin, I stayed in the cabin by myself. They were all dancing in the barn. And I wish I would have danced in the barn. You know, like there are little things that I just I wish I would have given myself more permission slips for freedom. Um, I wish I would have known that I that I had um the ability to do that earlier and sooner without the fear of like I'm gonna be judged or I'm gonna be watched or I'm not leading people or I'm not a right example, just releasing all of that. And yeah, I think I I probably would have had a lot more fun in my youth, you know, to just like be let yourself be. I shared a video earlier this week that was like, oh, somebody needs a reminder to be a silly goose, you know, just to like let it go, just to be, just to be yourself, and also to be a different version of you if you want to be. Not what feels like the thing I've been given, but what feels and aligns with me.

Ailey Jolie: 12:17

A quick word from me here, where Arielle's describing the felt sense of a body that can't fully inhabit itself, the panic rising in the chest, the tightness that shows up when no one is watching is an accurate description of what early conditioning imprints on the nervous system. When a young body learns that belonging depends on being smaller, quieter, more modest, the body doesn't just adapt behaviorally, it adapts physiologically. It learns to suppress breath, to brace the belly, to pull in at the shoulders, to edit the voice before it leaves the throat. Years later, the ideology can loosen and the body still braces. I want you to know that's not failure, that's the body remembering.

Ailey Jolie: 13:00

The unfolding Arielle is describing is not metaphorical. It's a nervous system slowly learning that it's safe to take up space. I know that you have not only written a book, but that you have performed the book or you've released the book in a spoken word way. And I would love to hear maybe the difference that has between reading words or hearing the author read them out loud and how that maybe ties into the sense of worthiness that you just named there as well.

Arielle Estoria: 13:27

Yeah. So I mean, I'm a spoken word poet. Like that's how I started is I wrote and memorized and performed specifically for it to be performed, like said out loud, you know. When it comes to my book, that is a little bit different of a process because it was like words meant to be read and experienced in that way. And so the album for me was like kind of like a returning to that art for and for me. Like there are some poems that I think need to be spoken over or spoken to people versus read, you know, um, in their own way. And so I think for me that was really just like I knew I wanted the book and I wanted a continuation of the book, and also to remember that the journey is not like we unfold and then we're done and then we just move on. Like, no, we are unfolding forever and ever and ever. My dad was like, so okay, we're doing the unfolding, and like when do you stop? And I was like, when we die, like when we're not here anymore to grow and to expand. And so for me, that just felt like the next thing I knew I wanted to do and the art of the unfolding and the unfolding.

Ailey Jolie: 14:39

In your answer there, you spoke about the artistry and how artistry can bring us home to our bodies. That wasn't your exact words, so I want to honor that. But I would love to kind of pull that apart with you because I know for myself, creativity has been such an act of reclamation and of coming home. And from a like clinical standpoint of somatics or embodiment work, oftentimes we don't talk about creativity or artistry. These practices like writing or embodied inquiry, some of these things get missed. So I would love to explore that piece a little bit because I it's definitely present in your writing and also in the answers that you shared. But just speaking a little bit about that intersection of artistry and being in the body.

Arielle Estoria: 15:21

Oh my gosh. Artistry for me is being in my body, and being in my body is artistry for me. I often say that like what I do is acting or what I do is, you know, modeling or what I do, but who I am is being a poet, who I am is being a writer, because I need to do those things. I love to act. I don't really need to do it, you know, but I love to do it. But when it comes to writing, when it comes to processing, when it comes to poetry, those are the things that I need to do. It keeps me intact with myself. And so I don't know how to separate the creative or artist process from becoming because for me, it is a huge part of becoming. And I think for for people who don't identify with that necessarily, I do think the practices of writing, the practices of art artistry, you know, the artist's way is a huge one, morning pages, journaling, things like that. Those are the things that I do think bring us back to ourselves because it's quiet and it's also a mirror. It's like a reflection of like, I think for me, I I will write something and I'm like, whoa, it's like putting it back to me almost in a way I didn't even see it. And a lot of times I often say I I black out in the spilling process. I don't often refer to it as writing, but spilling, because a lot of times it's this gushing muse-like experience where I need to put it down on paper. I need to express it, I need to say it out loud, and it just so happens to also resonate with other people, which is amazing. But for me, that is the healing process. That is the process of coming back to myself, is being able to create and write. I find myself through my art. You know, I remember working at a coffee shop and I had the opportunity of doing a show. So I like did my shift and then I did a show that evening, and my coworkers were like, oh, like I've seen you behind the bar, like I've seen you in your customer service, but now I've seen you like you on stage. That is you, you know, and that's such a hard thing to process sometimes because you're like, you don't always want to be on, you don't always want to be a performer, but there's a part of me that just shows up there, that just lights up there. And um, it's all about balance. You know, I definitely can't sustain that all the time. I turn her off when I need to. I think for me, the artistry is the becoming, it is the unfolding. I can't untather that from who I am or how I continue to find out who I am.

Ailey Jolie: 17:57

One thing that also seems quite present in both your languaging of how you describe being in the body, but also your writing as I've experienced it, is the presence of spirituality or faith or belief in how you understand being in the body. And so I would also love to just kind of pull at this thread a little bit because I understand that doesn't mean that you understand the same way. I understand faith, spirituality, and belief to be tied into artistry, but sometimes people don't. They separate them out. So I would love to explore this intersection as well of faith and belief, spirituality and the body.

Arielle Estoria: 18:29

Well, I mean, my artistry for me started tethered to my faith, you know. Like I'm a I'm a I I don't know if I mentioned this, but uh, I'm a pastor's kid. So a lot of my work was like, Ari, can you do a poem during service? You know, or like, can you be in the can you be in the youth skit? You know, like so all of my identity and my artistry was very much so intertwined um and my spirituality. And as my spirituality kind of started to unfold and grow and expand, you know, I still feel very connected um to God, to muse, to universe. I think I do think there is a lot of names for me, um, God or divine feels the most applicable, you know. And I do think that my artistry and my gift of creating, I do think it was something given to me. I still very much so believe that. And I think I I still resonate with that because the process, like I said, I kind of like black out, like I kind of go somewhere and I can only privy that too. It's being given to me. I'm communing with something bigger than myself. Um, because I think that's the only way to really make sense of how it reaches the people it reaches. I don't know if I can do that on my own accord. I'm so thankful to be a vessel of that, but I do think there is something bigger, and I think that is just what faith is, you know, the the idea that like this life and all of us we are interconnected, there's a thread. And I did kind of grow up with it being a more separate conversation in a sense of like if we do have this art form, it is only used, you know, in church, it is only used in this context. But then I started doing like conferences for Lululemon and Google and things like that. So you're like, okay, I think I actually can use this gift in other places and spaces, and it still feel like quote unquote holy work for me. It still feel like a divine calling. And I I did have to break out of the boxes of quote unquote religious in itself because I do think a lot of that language was really limiting. And I think the biggest thing for me was like, if I believe that God is a big entity, I sure do operate very small-minded when it comes to the idea of God that it can only exist here, that God can only exist in this kind of form. And I think creativity is what helped me be like, is there other ways you need to go about this? But there was a lot of conversation of like, you know, if you get into the industry, like don't be Katy Perry, who also grew up in the church, who grew up singing gospel and then started singing about kissing about girls, you know, there was a lot of like, don't don't go there, you know, and so I think I released a lot of that idea that art, that God, that spirituality can only exist in one form, in one way, and and be connected to people through a certain outlet. I I think it's too big for all of that, and I still do. I think honestly, one it broke down for me because of my queer friends. Like it was really conflicting for me to when I went to an art school, so half of everyone I was around was gay, you know, and I didn't feel the need to tell them to be otherwise, and then I got to college and it was this. Same thing. And then I got to a church and I was working as an intern for a couple who is now some of my favorite people. They're married. She's still a pastor of a church, you know, but they're amazing. And I was her intern when they both came out. And um, there was like tension on whether or not the church could hire someone who was outwardly gay. Neither of them were at the time. And so they one of them quit and she was like, I'm gay though. And that was like kind of her outing. And then my boss was like, I don't know if I'm gonna have a job tomorrow, you know? And they ended up both leaving. I did a poem at their wedding, and that opened up a huge door for me. So I was like, I really don't want to be a part of something that is making it seem like a huge part of my community can't sit at the table. That feels really conflicting for me. So first it was that, and then it was the man I was gonna marry. I had a lot of people be like, he's not Christian enough, he doesn't post about God enough. There's no scripture verses on his on his Instagram page. And I was told that this that that was not the person God had for me when I did not feel that way at all. And so that really broke the chasm. Like, can I say yes to this person who I know is my person, even though people are trying to tell me that God is that that's not my God person? And that broke it even more so. And so I think it was a lot of again, sifting through are those my fears? Are those my no's? Are those my um guidelines? Are again, are they the ones given to me? Um, and it's still a journey, you know, like we're having this conversation on Saturday, Easter's tomorrow, and I'm very conflicted on do I go somewhere just to feel like I kind of still need to? And so I'm still very much so like in this journey. This is 30 years of conditioning and 30 years of being offered a mindset and adapting it as my own that I'm undoing. And um, that is a uh not, I hope not a lifelong journey, but it's it's a journey.

Ailey Jolie: 24:08

I don't expect you to have an answer to this question, but I am curious because it's something that ran through my mind as you were speaking. When you kind of named the more binary or dogmatic beliefs, do you have a sense that for you those are quite intellectual or quite heady, or maybe a part of leaving was coming, coming home to the body and kind of leaving some of the statements in the mind or because this is the experience that you're naming is not my lived experience. And so I am curious for the listener who maybe can really resonate around like how you pull those things apart, especially when you have such a deep meaning, such a sense of community or such a sense of meaning. And but you can be really disconnected from your body and yourself. But you know, if I believe all these things, I get access to all these people.

Arielle Estoria: 24:54

Yeah, that's a huge part of it. I mean, the biggest fear, the conversation is deconstructing, right? That's that's what a lot of people called it. Um, and and that word is not a new word, but it became one, you know, within um evangelical or Christian spaces where a lot of my friends and the people around me were deconstructing. We were pulling the thread of this thing that we were given. And um I think in that, you know, there does come the fear of, will I lose this belonging? Because a lot of our belonging was based off of we all show up here at Sunday at 11 o'clock. We meet on Wednesday nights at seven. All of our worlds are very much so intertwined. So that was the hardest part was like, am I gonna lose people close to me because I don't have the same beliefs as them anymore, you know? And I did. I I lost some people, and that is a very real grief part of the process, but I do think I gained a sense of myself that I couldn't get back in that conditional belonging with other people. I gained a sense of like, oh, I know who I am. Like I fully know who I am. And if I'm not loved for that version of me and the next version of me and the next version of me, then I don't want that conditional belonging because that's that's what it was at the end of the day. If the belonging is tethered to you have to be or operate in this certain way to be loved, held, and belong, that's not belonging. That is conditional strings attached. And I'm sure there's a more concise or specific word for it. But I think that was what I really had to learn and realize like if my belonging is only connected to I believe this thing like everyone else, I don't know if I want that kind of belonging, you know. Um, but it it doesn't mean it wasn't any less sad. It doesn't mean I still grieve, like I grieve me not knowing, you know, like I grieve not realizing that I I I felt so small. I smell I felt so, I felt like a shell or a half of myself. And I I don't ever want to go back to that. So yeah, there is a lot of grief to it, but there's also a lot of joy of like, but look what I said yes to. But like, look at the life that I built that I I'm I don't remember the last time I had a panic attack, you know. Like I don't remember the last time I felt tight in my body, except for when I tried to revert back, you know, to the conditioning. And we do, we code switch, we mask because there's some belonging spaces that we still desperately want to be a part of. So we do the work to code switch and to switch over, but that's only so sustainable, you know, it's only so um um available to us until we just want to be the full version and find a love that says, I love this version of you despite what you believe, and I love the next version of you.

Ailey Jolie: 28:16

I would love to spend a little bit of time actually exploring the place of love and having the comfort to be our full selves in love. I know that this is something that you've written about and that you've spoken about, and maybe even entry point for the listener would be if you could share a little bit about your process of really stepping into that type of love and opening yourself up to it and maybe what that regards to coming home to your body or confronting some of the beliefs you had in your mind.

Arielle Estoria: 28:41

Yeah, I'm in a relational sense. Like when I met my now husband, I was like good. I was touring, I was traveling, I was living my best life. I was like embracing my singleness. At that time, I was doing a lot of like, I'm a single girl and God still loves me kind of conversations, you know. I think that in itself is just it's not singleness, it's just living life outside of a relationship, you know. Um, but I was doing that and and I met him, you know, in that time where I was like, oh no, no, no, I'm good. Like I know myself, I'm absolutely fine. Um, but I also was still, you know, I gave him a lot of warnings. I was like, I'm a lot, you know, I'm a lot to handle. Um, I might be a little too much, only because those were things I was told, like, you're a lot, Ari. Um, and whoever handled, whoever's gonna be with you is gonna have to be dealing with a lot. And I kept telling him that. And I remember after like a month or two of saying that, he was like, You gotta stop saying that. Like, you're not too much. You're perfect for me at least. He was like, I am fully capable of handling whatever it is you're gonna bring to the table. And I really needed to hear that, you know. Um, even just being the way he hugged me or the way he held me, it was always like on my belly or my hips, places where I was like, uh, I'm like, I don't love these parts of myself all the time. But look at me being held and being loved. And I had already done a lot of the work of being like, I I love myself, I embrace myself, but he really helped me take it to the next level. Being seen and being loved, like in that way, it's still jarring. We're we'll hit six years in May, and I'm still like, this person really sees me. Like, this is really scary and really beautiful. But he kind of helps me even more so expand the guidelines for what it means to be loved. I'm able to be loved in a way where someone dreams on behalf of me that I'm being able to be loved, you know, bonnet on, hair looking a mess, and he is like, you look so beautiful. And I'm like, you're a liar, you know. But also for him, he's being his most honest self. And so I think for me, finding finding love that helped me expand the love I had already poured into myself was just it's it's unlike anything else, you know. Um, and then also to find relationships um that hold you in the same way, friendships that hold you in the same way. I am so thankful to have friends who have known since they were in middle school, you know, and they have been with me through so many ups and downs and have seen all the different versions of me. And I'm so thankful to have those people in my life who are like, that was Ari, and now this is Ari and that will be Ari and the same for a partner. Um, and I think they're one and the same, you know. I I love my husband, he's my best friend, but I'm also very thankful to have the women and the people in my life outside of my partner who who's able to also speak life into me, who's able to also hold me for all that I am. And that love is just, yeah, that kind of love is just really it's special. It's it's it's unique and it's rare, and I want everyone to have it.

Ailey Jolie: 32:01

If the listener is listening and they feel a little bit hesitant or a bit nervous, or there's parts of them that don't feel so ready for that type of love, do you have any suggestions? Because you named pouring that type of love into yourself first. If you had some suggestions around that process or what that looked like for you.

Arielle Estoria: 32:16

Oh my gosh, I so I traveled a lot for work, and I my favorite thing to do was to like find one night where I would either go to a hotel or find somewhere close by, and I just have like a little dinner, a little steak, a little why, a little treat myself kind of moment, you know, really learning to like just have those like quote unquote date-like moments, but with myself, it was like a huge part of it. I still do that when I travel if I'm by myself, you know, being able to have those touch point moments with myself. I think that is a huge process of it. Not being afraid to do things on your own. How would you live differently if you were in a relationship? And if there's something where you're like, I would do this, this, this, this, do those things with yourself, you know. I think moving my body was like a huge thing. I like was pretty active in terms of like going to hot yoga and really just like learning to love and be with my body was a huge part of it. Um, because it does get very intimate and being close to someone in that way is a vulnerable process. And a lot of times too, it's like we're not really ever gonna be ready. I was not ready when I'm when I've met my husband, and it was very like, oh shoot, this is the man I'm gonna marry. Like this, it was very quick. And I was like, I don't know if I'm ready for that, you know. But I I absolutely was by the time I was in it. And so what we think we may not be ready, oftentimes I think is just a hesitance or a fear or just something that we still need to work on, and we'll keep working on those things, whether we're in a relationship or whether we're not.

Ailey Jolie: 33:49

I would love to hear you maybe describe the difference in your body between a hesitancy or a fear and a no.

Arielle Estoria: 33:55

It's like a hesitance that's really deeply leaning towards a no, but I'm only hesitating probably because of some conditional thing, right? Like I think I should say yes. It's a kind thing to say yes, whatever little thing, but like my gut is leaning towards a no. And then there's like this like higher kind of above the gut kind of flutteriness that is, I think, more associated with um just like a nerve, or like this is new and I don't really know where it's gonna go. Like, I got the opportunity to meet and chat with this woman who hosts these really beautiful retreats, and she wanted someone to come and co-host for her. And it would be traveling to Bali, and I was like, Oh, I'm feeling the fluttery, I'm not feeling a no about it. Like all the senses are intact. I'm nervous because I'm like, oh, I get really bad motion sickness. I don't know how I'm gonna do that long flight. I'm a little nervous for the long, like I noticed in my body where it was more nervousness, and then I think my gut lower register in my body is a little bit more leaning towards the no. And so I think again, I think I'm able to decipher that because of the work I've done in my body and really learning like about myself. And then there's always like those moments where I'm like, if I'm going back and forth between a yes or a no, it's often more so on that side because I feel like I have to say yes and I'm navigating through not actually wanting to, and and you just kind of learn. I think that's just how it's sat, at least for me and my body. There's like a higher, more in the middle of my belly that's like just fluttery and nervous, but when it sits a little deeper, that's usually my no.

Ailey Jolie: 35:43

What are some practices that have led you home to your body? Hot yoga is a huge one.

Arielle Estoria: 35:49

I've been practicing yoga for gosh, 15, 10, 15 years now. I'm also certified in it because I just wanted to understand it a little bit more, also be able to orchestrate it for people who are trying to come back home to their bodies, who don't feel safe in traditional studio spaces and things like that. So moving, I love walks. Um, even as I like try to sprinkle in my Ligree and things, I always feel I always come back to a walk. I try to start my week with a walk because that that's also my thinking and creative space. And so even when I want to be like, I'm gonna pilotties and sculpt, and I can do all those later in the week, but I have to have at least one or two, if not every day, some type of like really grounding, not with any type of intention physical, but just some type of walk, gentle movement is a huge one for me. Whether I like I do like a Pilates, I do like a strength class, but I also have to incorporate gentle movement for myself. And I think that's also just something I've learned in my learning my Area Veda. Like I just I also need the grounding softness as well. You know, finding ways to learn about myself, whether that's my human design or my astrology or whatever else, um, those have been huge parts in terms of like, oh, I didn't realize that about myself. Getting dressed is a huge embodiment practice for me. I let every day be like, who am I? Who would I want to show up as the world? How do I want to present myself and have that show up in how I dress?

Ailey Jolie: 37:29

Brief note from me here. What Arielle just described, the no that sits deeper in the gut, the flutter that lives higher in the belly, is an accurate description of interoception. Interoception is our capacity to read the signals of our internal body. Hunger, breath, heart, temperature, and a yes, a yes and a no. And here's what I want to name clearly. Arielle's map is Arielle's map. Your no may not live in your gut, it may live in your jaw, your chest, your pelvic floor, the back of your throat. The work is not to adopt someone else's internal geography. The work is to slow down long enough to learn your own. What practices would you maybe recommend to the listener that are maybe unknown or not as common? You named a beautiful one there of getting dressed that sounds very personal and specific to you. I love it. But I'm curious for the listener who's maybe new, if you have any pieces for them.

Arielle Estoria: 38:24

So, like a gratitude process where it's like every day, it's like, okay, this morning, thank you for my arms, you know. Um, thank you for my dimples, thank you for my legs, thank you for my feet, or something that like really tethers you too. Gratitude towards a certain aspect of you. I think we often like go through the day and we don't acknowledge like this thing has carried me all day long. It got me somewhere, it reminded me to breathe, you know, like it held me. And when we think of it more as like an entity versus a home, something changes. Like we're so precious with our homes, how we decorate it, how we show up in it, how we relax in it. And I think I've adapted that same type of mentality of like this is my home, this is the thing I get to do life in, and I'm so thankful. And so I think a gratitude practice is huge. And talking to yourself. If you don't talk to yourself, like you should talk to yourself. I think that's such a great practice of like, hey girl, like how you do it. You know, like I genuinely talk to myself, and so I think that's I don't know what you would call that, but yeah, talking to yourself.

Ailey Jolie: 39:39

But I wanted to ask you, I know that you lead embodiment and self-acceptance workshops. And I would love to hear what you notice happening in women's bodies when they're perhaps maybe given permission to take up space or use their voice or to be seen. I love exercises like that.

Arielle Estoria: 39:54

I often do I do like a mirror exercise where I help them find a partner, someone they don't usually know and just stare at each other. Sometimes it's just a few minutes, sometimes it's five, sometimes it's seven, but there's always like a bunch of talking, a bunch of talking, a bunch of talking, and I'm like, okay, get all the talking out, and can you do this in silence? And then the giggles start and people are nervous, and then we talk about it after, you know, and I was like, why was that so hard just to look at someone? And a lot of times it's because we're so busy focusing on being perceived that we don't take the time to perceive other people and noticing what comes up in that, but also like, can you can you just let yourself be seen? Can you let yourself be held? Um, I also like I do like a lot of physical stuff just because it gets us out of our head and into our bodies, literally, literally making people take up space, either power stancing or noticing just how people get uncomfy, just being able to like stand up and I make them introduce themselves in a power stance. So choose some type of stance, say your name, where you're from, and maybe something fun about you, but you have to do your power stance first, you know. And a lot of people's power stances usually start like pretty small, and it's really fun to watch them like at the end of the time together. Okay, now power stance and share, you know, what you learned from uh someone else or what your reflection was, and watching people's power stances expand and being willing to take up space. Um doing a lot of I am prompts, being able to just articulate about ourselves in a way that's not self-deprecating, but enlightening and encouraging and equipping, um, just changes everything. And it's and it's not just, you know, talking our our stuff just to talk our stuff, but it's just to like remind you who you are, you know, uh, and that you're worthy. And most of all that you're worthy of taking up the space. And so if anything, I always try to bring that back home. It's not that you don't want to take up space, it's that you just need to remind it that you are you you don't need a permission slip for me. I'm gonna give it to you anyway. The permission slip comes from you, and I need you to remember that thereafter so that I just take the place of whoever else you think you need a permission slip from, but first and foremost, realizing that it comes from you first.

Ailey Jolie: 42:26

And you can answer from your own personal experience or from what you've observed or what people have shared from you. But I would love to hear from you why you perceive it to be hard for people to take up space or to own the space that they're in.

Arielle Estoria: 42:40

Yeah. Well, I think the narrative for women specifically was that we couldn't, you know, we're not allowed to make yourself smaller, make yourself more approachable, kinder, nicer, cleaner, better. We've been given all these narratives to make ourselves a fraction of ourselves. So, of course, when we try to do the work that contradicts that, it's gonna be difficult. It's gonna feel counterintuitive. But I think unfortunately, the greatest lie or the greatest conditioning the world ever did was remind women that they are that they're not a force to be reckoned with when they are absolutely a force to be reckoned with, when they are absolutely the fire in which things ignite, the birth, the home in which this world grows and flourishes. And if you look, all our narratives don't remind us of that. You know, we've had one superwoman movie, you know, like we're not given the spaces to be put into those platforms, and so we have to put ourselves in that space. And so, of course, it's uncomfortable, of course it's a journey because it literally goes against everything we've been given and what the world says about. About who we are and who we're not, but at the end of the day, we get to decide that. And that is that that there is the worthy work. So for me, again, the stage is where I feel like I come to life, right? It's it's where I feel like I am the most myself. Writing is a part of that, it's a more personal part of it. But for me, like I I feel the most in my worthiness when I'm able to offer things to people, to the world, to myself, um, in a way that's like, don't even listen to me. Like me aside, I want this to be your like nugget of of existence. I want this to be poured into you so that you go and then remember exactly who you are. I I think for myself as an artist, it makes no sense if I'm just getting up there and people are experiencing me, my words, my outfit, whatever, and not taking something away for themselves. And I hope that it's always that people know that they were worthy when they got in the room and they're worthy when they come out of it.

Ailey Jolie: 45:07

For someone who's just starting their process of embodiment and you did give us some practices earlier, I would love for you to maybe share an invitation or something you wished maybe you had known at the start of your process of coming home to your body for the listener today.

Arielle Estoria: 45:23

There's like so much I wish I I would have known. One that I could do this journey to begin with, you know, just like first before I even get into the things to do, like I wish someone would have just given me like the permissions that, like, hey, it's okay to not be this version of you anymore. You know, like I really wish I had that in itself, first and foremost. And then secondly, I wish there was just again the belonging that wasn't tethered to if you are this way, then you belong, then you have community. Um, I think that is the second thing is being able to maybe give that to yourself. I don't know what that looks like. I don't know how that works for you, but I think that is first and foremost. I wish I had those, those permission slips. My grandma recently passed in January and she wore a lot of wigs, and I share in a poem that like she shape shifted just for the plot. Um, that's something I'm trying to adapt more of like, what does it mean to just shape shift just because? Just because this life is full and we can, you know? And so she's she's been giving me those kind of little lessons. Um, all of which I think, you know, little ingredients I wish I had when I began. I think I would have gotten here a little sooner, but I'm still thankful for when I did.

Ailey Jolie: 46:48

Thank you for your time and for sharing. There are a few threads from this conversation I want to stay with for a moment. The first is about mothers. Arielle told us almost in passing about watching her mother preach from the floor. At the same level, she said, as everyone else. I'm pausing here for us to notice what a young body might learn in a room like that. I'm not referencing the theology, but instead the choreography. The body might learn in this space where it's allowed to stand, it might learn the height its voice is permitted to rise to. It might learn which parts of the room are for it and which are not. Decades of embodiment work can follow if any of these things are learned, and yet the body still will know where the floor is. This is what I mean when I say conditioning is not only in the mind, it's in the posture, the breath, the musculature of the throat, the set of the jaw. Arielle's unfolding is not primarily intellectual, it's a body relearning its own dimensions. The second piece I want to pause on is about being held. Errol described her husband early in their relationship, holding her at her belly and her hips, the places she had not yet learned to love. I want to name what's happening clinically in this moment. In attachment work we speak about corrective relational experiences, the slow repeated experience and being met in the places we're taught to hide. This work isn't magic, it's not instant. It's the nervous system across hundreds of small encounters, updating an old belief. This part of me is not a problem to be managed. For some of us, the first experience of this kind of holding will come through a partner. For some, it will come through a friend, a therapist, a teacher, a practice, or our own hand on our own body. What matters is the repetition. What matters is that the body gets to practice being loved in the specific places it was told to disappear. The third piece I want to spend some time with is about the bikini and the barn and the women dancing naked while Arielle stayed in the cabin. I want to pause here because I don't want anyone listening to hear or feel that they're behind. The body moves at the pace the body moves. What I heard in Arielle's voice when she told that story was not regret. It was a tenderness for a younger self who is not ready yet, an invitation now to the small acts of permission that were not given to her. A swimsuit, a dance, a walk alone, a meal at a table for one. None of these are small things. These are slow, specific rehearsals of a self coming home. And the last thing I want to leave you with is Arielle's grandmother, whose shape shifted in Arielle's words just for the plot. And I love this. Because the work of embodiment is sometimes framed as arriving at one true, final, authentic self. As if the body's task is to settle into a single identity and stay there. Your body is allowed to change. You're allowed to be many women across one lifetime. The unfolding, if we stay ruthlessly honest to our body, never ends. If this conversation with Arielle opened something in you, I'd love you to come deeper into this work with me through Embody, my embodiment program at inbodymethod.com. You can also spend time with me in person on retreat, or you can read more of my words on Substack where I write each week on embodiment semantics and the lived experience of being in a body. There's both a free and paid offering waiting there for you. Again, thank you so much for being here and for allowing me to be a part of your process of coming home to your one and only body. If you found value in this episode, it would mean so much to me for you to share the podcast with friends, a loved one, or on your social platforms. If you have the time, please rate and review the podcast so that this podcast reaches a larger audience and can inspire more and more humans to connect to their bodies too. Thank you for being here and nurturing the relationship you have with your very own body.